Essay 911: 10 Common College Essay Mistakes—and How to Fix Them
Updated: Sep 27
A college essay can be beautifully written and still not do its job.
The goal isn't to prove that you're an impressive writer, squeeze every accomplishment into 650 words, or figure out what you think an admissions officer wants to hear. The essay gives the reader something the rest of your application can't: a closer look at how you think, what you notice, what matters to you, and how your experiences have shaped you.
That means some of the most common college essay mistakes happen when students try too hard to make the essay sound like a “college essay.”
If you're staring at a draft that doesn't quite feel right, start here.
1. Writing to make a good impression
The mistake: Choosing a topic or shaping the story around what you think will impress an admissions officer.
Maybe the story seems more serious, more accomplished, more intellectual, or more inspiring than the one you actually want to tell.
The fix: Stop asking, What will admissions officers like? and start asking, What would I want them to understand about me?
Your essay doesn't need to prove that you're extraordinary. It needs to reveal something authentic that isn't obvious elsewhere in the application.
2. Telling them what they already know
The mistake: Turning the essay into a narrative version of your résumé.
If your activities list already says you founded a club, won an award, captained a team, or completed an internship, the personal statement usually shouldn't spend 650 words establishing that you did it.
The fix: Look for what the résumé leaves out.
What were you thinking during the experience? What surprised you? Where did you struggle? Did your approach change? What did you notice that someone looking only at the accomplishment would never know?
The activity may provide the setting. You are still the subject.
3. Assuming a common topic is automatically a bad topic
The mistake: Rejecting an experience simply because other students could also write about sports, volunteering, family, travel, an injury, a job, or a difficult class.
Or doing the opposite: choosing a dramatic or highly personal story because you think an essay has to be unusual.
The fix: Worry less about whether the topic is unique and more about whether the perspective is yours.
A sports essay can work if it reveals something specific and unexpected about how you think or changed. A quiet story about driving your grandmother to the grocery store can be compelling for the same reason.
It's rarely just what happened. It's what you make of what happened.
4. Neglecting structure and flow
The mistake: Including every detail because everything feels important.
The result is often an essay that moves from childhood to freshman year to an activity to a lesson to college without a clear through-line.
The fix: Ask yourself what the essay is really about—in one sentence.
Then look at every paragraph and ask whether it helps develop that idea.
You don't necessarily need a formal five-paragraph structure. But the reader should be able to follow the movement of the story: where you started, what happened, what shifted, and what you understand now that you didn't understand before.
5. Trying too hard to write a “hook”
The mistake: Believing your first sentence has to shock, entertain, or dazzle the admissions reader.
That pressure can lead to forced dialogue, dramatic declarations, dictionary definitions, or an opening that sounds clever but has little connection to the actual essay.
The fix: Start somewhere specific.
A moment. An observation. A line of dialogue you genuinely remember. Something you were doing, seeing, thinking, or feeling.
The opening doesn't have to scream KEEP READING!
It just needs to make the reader curious enough to enter your story.
6. Making someone else the main character
The mistake: Writing a beautiful essay about your parent, grandparent, teacher, coach, sibling, or mentor—and leaving the admissions reader knowing much more about that person than about you.
The fix: Other people can absolutely be important characters in your essay. Just keep asking:
What does my relationship with this person reveal about me?
What did you notice? How did you respond? What did you learn about yourself? What changed in what you did afterward?
The influential person can be part of the story. You still need to be the lens through which we experience it.
7. Using language that doesn't sound like you
The mistake: Replacing natural language with formal, elaborate, or “academic” wording because it sounds more sophisticated.
This problem has become even easier to create with AI, grammar tools, parents, teachers, and well-meaning editors all suggesting more polished phrasing.
The fix: Use the “Would I actually say this out loud?” test.
Watch for:
vocabulary you wouldn't normally use
sentences overloaded with adjectives or adverbs
an unusually formal tone
very few contractions
polished observations that don't actually sound like your thoughts
Your essay should be edited. It just shouldn't be edited until you disappear from it.
And if you're using Grammarly or another writing tool, don't automatically accept every suggestion. Sometimes the supposedly “better” sentence is simply less like you.
8. Proofreading before the essay is actually finished
Yes, typos matter.
But here's a bigger mistake: spending an hour perfecting punctuation in a paragraph you may eventually need to delete.
The mistake: Polishing sentences before you've solved the larger issues of topic, structure, specificity, and reflection.
The fix: Revise in layers.
First ask:
Is this the right story?Does the essay reveal something meaningful about me?Does the structure work?Are there enough specific moments?
Then worry about individual sentences, grammar, spelling, and punctuation.
Proofreading should be one of the last stages of revision, not the first.
9. Fighting the word limit instead of using it
The mistake: Treating 650 words as an inconvenience rather than part of the assignment.
Students often become attached to sentences because they sound good, even when they aren't helping the essay.
The fix: Ask of every paragraph:
What job is this doing?
If two examples demonstrate the same thing, you may only need one. If the reader can infer something from the scene, you may not need to explain it again afterward.
Cutting isn't just about getting under the limit. It often makes the essay more focused and powerful.
10. Answering the prompt but missing the point
The mistake: Technically responding to the Common App question while never really answering the larger question behind almost every personal statement:
Who are you?
You can write about a challenge without showing how you responded to it. You can describe an accomplishment without showing why it mattered. You can tell a wonderful story and never quite explain what the reader should understand about you because of it.
The fix: When you finish a draft, put the prompt aside and ask:
What would someone know about me after reading this that they wouldn't know from the rest of my application?
If you can't answer that question, the essay probably isn't finished yet.
And yes, you can push the boundaries of a prompt creatively. Just remember there are sometimes fine lines between clever, cute, clownish, and cocky.
Before you call the essay finished
Read the draft one more time without trying to edit it.
Instead, look for evidence of you:
A specific detail only you would know.
A reaction that reveals how your mind works.
Something you didn't understand at first.
A moment when your behavior changed.
A sentence you could imagine yourself actually saying.
The strongest college essays don't necessarily have the most dramatic stories or the most elegant prose. They leave the reader feeling that they understand the student a little better. That's the job.
Your essay doesn't need to manufacture a more impressive version of you. It needs to make the real version easier to see.
Need help finding the story—and keeping the writing authentically yours?
Application Mentor helps students develop college essays through brainstorming, questioning, and thoughtful feedback while preserving the student's own ideas and voice.
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